to help us to understand and deconstruct capitalism in order to create a sustainable and peaceful social system.

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Do Not Trust The Intercept or How To Burn A Source

I've long had my suspicions back about The Intercept which was strongly reinforced by a series of Newsbud's (formerly Boiling Frogs) articles in 2013 and 2014 about Glenn Greenwald's reluctance to release the treasure trove of NSA linked spying documents that Edward Snowden gave him. Bernhard makes a very good case that we should not trust The Intercept.

The Intercept, a subdivision of First Look Media, was founded by
Pierre Omidyar, a major owner of the auctioning site eBay and its PayPal
banking division. Omidyar is a billionaire and "philanthropist" who's
(tax avoiding) Omidyar Network foundation is "investing" for "returns".
Its microcredit project for farmers in India, in cooperation with people
from the fascists RSS party, ended in an epidemic of suicides when the
farmers were unable to pay back. The Omidyar Network also funded
(fascist) regime change groups in Ukraine in cooperation with USAID.
Omidyar had cozy relations with the Obama White House. Some of the held
back NSA documents likely implicate Omidyar's PayPal.

The
Intercept was funded with some $50 million from Omidyar. Its first hires
were Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras - all involved in
publishing the Snowden papers and other leaks. Its first piece was based
on documents from the leaked NSA stack. It has since published on this
or that but not in a regular media way. The Intercept pieces are
usually heavily editorialized and tend to have a mainstream "liberal" to
libertarian slant.